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Workout thread

Following on from the other thread, still experimenting with this catch/jujitsu hybrid I mentioned. Was there tonight. Got squashed by some experienced guys and then got a fellow newbie to tap a couple of times. Though to be frank, he's a fair bit smaller than me so it's not an entirely fair match-up. The trade off is his stamina is better than mine so I had to get very defensive at the end to avoid the same thing happening to me.

Glad to hear about your jujitsu adventures, sounds like a lot of fun, I feel like it would all be a great big puzzle to just get stuck into. I would personally love to give it a go but they just cost so damn much and with a kid on the way and more or less a single income it isn't the time to be splurging.

I've been keeping up my DDP Yoga and it is working particularly with giving me greater flexibility which is something I have never really had. My goal is to be able to touch the floor when I bend over with straight legs and I'm already making progress.

Am also slowly dropping from the 90kgs I was about 3 weeks ago to my goal of 80 by the time the kid arrives, I'll probably get there before if I keep it up but I figure slow and stready wins the race.

Glad to hear about your jujitsu adventures, sounds like a lot of fun, I feel like it would all be a great big puzzle to just get stuck into. I would personally love to give it a go but they just cost so damn much and with a kid on the way and more or less a single income it isn't the time to be splurging.

With this in mind I'd say shop around. The place I go is cheap, £5 a session (which I guess is about $8-9 to you). But I could easily go somewhere that sees itself as a bit more serious, a bit less recreational/community minded, and I could easily pay 4-5 as much.

Everyday is amoitious but I guess you just have to listen to DDP at the end - "don't forget to do this tomorrow."

I've been doing it 3 mornings a week and I can tell the difference between the days I don't get up. Right now it is taking a lot of will power to get out of bed at 6am as things get colder and darker in the morning. Fortunately I don't have a choice with my cat who eats at 6am every morning (we run her on an alarm) so I have to get up then but the hard part is to resist the urge to go straight back to bed.

Does hiking up mountains count in this thread? Just yesterday, I climbed the tallest mountain in south Wales while doing a 9 mile hike. I then climbed another two. 1000m of total ascent. My legs are dead now. I had to crawl over here and climb onto my computer chair using my arms.

I'm not great at doing stuff every day. I miss one out and then the whole thing collapses, presumably too much pressure. So I do a couple of hours more intense stuff a couple of times a week and then more moderate bits to top that off, like walking. Find it easier to keep to that kind of rhythm.

The jiu jitsu stuff is starting to click. I've been better at more of the wrestling and position and stuff to this point but last night things started to fall into place and I managed to force a tapout about three different times in the open roll at the end. Also seems I'm developing a bit of a 'style' as time goes on, rather than just having my brain turn to shit and then trying not to get caught out in whatever I'm doing.

I must say, having big shoulders is a bit of a help. People have a hard time doing their stuff to you, and it makes your own chokes more effective.

Nice work PT. What kind of style have you worked out? What submission did you use to get the tap out?

I used to play rugby FTLOTF, it was one of my favourite things as a teenager but I had a few head knocks that left a little out of it and my left knee was also starting to feel a bit of wear and tear so I stopped. I've thought about starting up again a few times but never got on the field. What is your position?

As for me, my yoga took a bit of a break for the last fortnight but now I'm on holidays hopefully I'll be hitting it up more regularly (got it scheduled for each day). I'm finding some of the intimediate moves like the Can Opener, Wrap Around and Broken Aeroplace pretty difficult bu in a good way.

Style might best be called "aggressive", I think. Don't really hang around when they're in guard but try to quickly get past and into a controlling position. Also get elbows and forearms into awkward places as something else to deal with...

Guillotine choke was definitely one. That's probably my most successful to date. Also other variations of chokes such as head and arm basically, I tend to only get the armlocks and stuff in more managed scenarios. Open roll I either get a chokehold or nothing!

I stared out playing in a Years 5-6 comp as a small year 5 kid and got put on the wing and after doing alright just generally running fast and being small and elusive I also played backup fullback a bit. The next year because I was one of the few guys that had played I moved in closer as a running center, mostly playing inside center and I really enjoyed being closer in and found I was actually a much better defender than ball runner.

My family moved to a much stronger rugby town when I hit high school and after struggling to find my place in the backs playing in fly-half, inside & outside center my club coach threw me into flanker for the second half of a meaningless end of season match and it took me about 10 minutes to realise I had found my niche. From then on I played most of my serious matches as a loose forward mostly as a 7 on the openside but sometimes as number 8 or 6 but always as a fetcher and ruck securer. As a swimmer I was really fit so could just keep going full speed the whole match following the ball and tackling anything that moved.

Through school where we would have an amalgamation of the union and league players I ended up in the tight forwards, mostly as a hooker but sometimes as second row or prop, still very much playing as I did for my club like a loose forward but just in those positions because the league boys didn't know how to pack into a scrum.

By my final year of playing unfortunately I had stopped growing and just didn't have the size to match it in the forwards so moved to scrum-half and back to where I started as a defensive inside-center. I knew enough about the game by then to make it work and actually really enjoyed scrum half because I was still in amongst the rucks but got to do a bit of play making.

Anyway, long story to say I mostly played as a loose forward but in the process played just about everywhere.

In actual football I have always been a midfielder or defender. When I lived in Brazil I was a pretty dirty defender, coming off years of only football socially I was hopelessly outclassed but realised the Brazilians weren't used to much physicality and I could very easily put other players off as long as I kept an eye on what the ref was looking at.

Quite the journey Sam, great post. I've always quietly admired people who can cover all the different roles on the field. There are some positions I'm just not suited to, and a couple I didn't ever have the skills for, so to be able to do that and some of the 'gruntwork' I used to put in... fair play.

I certainly empathise with the dirty defender bit. I've kicked a few shins in my time!

Off to wrestling again tonight. Last time was just better people so I found it pretty tough. I can't imagine there'll be loads there with the world cup on, either.

Oh it was more than the odd kick of the shin, I was 18 and all I cared about was proving I was a hard nut there were some real hard elbows in the ribs, lots of short grabbing, the odd stomp on their feet while jostling for position, just really deplorable stuff but all done to mask my huge skill gap and insecurity about being shown up.

I imagine that doing combat sport when you are out of your depth is a pretty humbling thing.

I went on a really good bike ride yesterday. I haven't been cycling for exercise at all this year but my father was down here so I clipped in my pedals and we went for a good 40km run down a local bike track. The way back has a hill that is about a 100m climb over about 4.5km which isn't steep at all but just because it is quite long it really pushed my cardio.

Ha, you're dirtier than me. I had no worries about a bit of shoulder barging and using my frame - and I've probably pulled a few shirts back in my time - but I don't think stamping and elbows were really part of my game... but maybe on the Rugby field, might have given out the occasional shoeing there.

As to the combat sports thing... it's not too bad if you approach it without an ego. If you expect people who've been working at it longer to be better than you then it can be a positive to learn from them. But if you've got too high an opinion of yourself then yeah, I imagine it'd cut pretty deep pretty quick. I mean, there's not really much you can do to argue when people can defend against you with ease and can turn it around to their advantage at pretty much any time. So you'd best have a sense of humour about it or you won't last!

I went back to the gym for the first time since Feb. I've been enjoying the DDP Yoga but I dunno.... Meathead's gotta Meathead I guess.

It was fun, focused on legs from the push, pull, legs split I used to do and two days later they really hurt, in a good way, but hurt none the less. Am really keen to head out tomorrow morning and get a work out in before work. Push day.

You know a good way to make sure you never actually have time to train? Open a gym.

Entering week eight of my expansion and finally starting to feel like things are ready to fall into place with my own training. Cnonctrating on Olympic lifts and callisthenics, going back over old ground really.

I have a BJJ club starting in September and have purposely put it on a Monday night so that I can join in myself! Looking forward to getting out of my comfort zone!

I opened my first gym in February 2014, and as things began to develop and grow the opportunity to expand into a bigger facility was presented to us around the start of 2017. We went from a 2000 sq ft unit to a 12,500 sq ft beast of a place!

Delighted how it’s all went, we’re ahead of where we projected with memberships, all my coaches are busy and we’re in the middle of training another one up so everything’s positive on that end!

Been keeping up with my curling. I've gone from doing insane amount of reps on pints, up to fifths, and again up to gallons of whiskey....jk...been paying for a gymn membership and haven't been all yr. Gotta get my ass to the gym

People used to ask why I ran and did so much cardio being the small guy I am. (5í8Ē, 140lbs... I donít know how that translates to you Brits) After taking a guy 50-100lbs heavier down and letting him gas himself before submitting him, I would reply with ďThatís why I keep up on cardio.Ē

Honestly sounds like I'm one of the bigger guys you'd let tire himself out. My guess is I'd be a Cruiserweight using the MMA weight classes, a super-cruiser in the IKF, and I'd probably have to box at heavyweight.

Haven't worked out in too long...it makes a difference for sure...they use to call me Ken doll when I was younger...I think there's a psycholical effect to it...but when you work a lot of hours there's usually 1 other thing, you may get time to do... While I choose reading and writing, I can say working out and eating healthy is a no lose scenario. You feel good about yourself. You live longer.

Definitely feel like I'm making headway with some of the jiu jitsu side of the grappling I've been doing. Can stay in better positions for a lot longer now and am getting better at locking in a few of the submissions.

It is good fun. The learning curve is pretty steep, so yeah, for the first month or so you can basically be flipped around like a turtle on its back, but the feeling when you start to get to know a few bits and learn a bit of defence is great.